Strange Fate
by The Lady of the Mists
Summary: Seventeen years ago, Lorelai gave birth to twins. Now, the younger twin Susan is back following the death of her adopted parents. But she has a secret that could unleash horrors onto Stars Hollow...as well as bring back the only man she has ever loved.
1. A New Home

**Strange Fate**

by the Lady of the Mists

Chapter One: A New Home

From the time that I was old enough to understand what it meant, I knew that my parents weren't my birth parents, knew that the family that I had been born into had given me away and my parents had taken me in. I also knew that my parents didn't want me, not really, anyway. My mom just couldn't have kids and Dad really needed somebody to take over his company—of course, he had planned on adopting a son, but he decided that he'd rather just marry me off to some rich guy and expand his empire, so to speak.

All I was to them was a commodity, someone that was born just so they could marry me off to the richest guy that they could find, I would have his nice, rich kids, and that was it. They didn't care about me; they didn't care about my happiness or what I wanted. All they really cared about was making sure that I didn't stray off the path.

Maybe that's why I was so eager to break free of the chains that they kept around me, why I kept tugging against them, eager to break free.

Not that it really mattered anymore, I thought as I stared out into the streets of Stars Hollow, Connecticut, about a hundred miles and a couple of states from my home of Redwood Falls, a town with a tragic history and an even more tragic present. All that mattered was that that part of my life was now over.

After my parents had been killed—murdered by a self-serving psychopath—and my life had turned upside down, the social workers tracked down my birth family and found my mother Lorelai Gilmore living with my twin sister in this strange little town. Needless to say, I was more than a little shocked to discover that not only did I have a twin, but she had kept Rory while our father gave me up.

Here's the deal: Lorelai Gilmore and Christopher Hayden get pregnant at the ripe age of sixteen, she gives birth to twins and decides that she doesn't want to marry Christopher, so they split up the twins. Lorelai got my sister Rory and Christopher got me, but his parents decided that they didn't want me to drag my father down any more than he already was and forced him to give me up for adoption. I was adopted by the Dawsons and seventeen years later, here I am, driving through this little town to live with the family that I'd never known.

It wasn't too hard to find the house; it was right where they had told me that it was going to be. And anyway, if I made two right turns, then I'd be right back in the centre of town, so it wasn't really hard to find anything in this town. It was a nice enough house, though nothing grand, not like I had grown up in. (Yes, I did grow up in one of those huge, stone mansions, but personally, I would have preferred to grow up in something like this.)

The house was the kind that I had been planning on moving into after I graduated from high school with—

A lump formed in my throat as my thoughts travelled in a different direction and it took all of my energy not to start sobbing right then and there as I took several deep breaths, trying to reign in my emotions. Now was not the time when I needed to lose it, especially now when my temper was on the edge of explosion, along with the rest of my emotions.

"Easy, Susan," I muttered to myself, shaking my head, trying to clear it. "It's all right. You can do this." And anyway, it wasn't like I was going to get this chance a second time. In a few years, I wouldn't have the chance to come here and get to know them. Might as well grab the opportunity while I could and I knew that if I didn't do this, then I would regret it for the rest of my life.

And unfortunately, that was going to be a really, really, _really_ long time.

But how was I going to hide the truth from these people for very long? It was bound to become obvious that I wasn't a normal girl; they were bound to notice things when she was living in the same house with her and once they began to notice, then they would slowly piece together the truth and then all that would happen was it would end up in a bloodshed . . . just like before.

Banishing those thoughts from my mind, I stared at my reflection in the mirror determinedly. "It's gonna be okay, Susan," I told myself firmly. "You can't think like that, all right? Everything's going to turn out just fine. It's not going to be like it was before. If they start to figure out what's going on, then you'll just have to leave. Simple as that. Now get up and go knock on that door."

Reaching for the necklace that I wore around my necklace, reassuring myself that it was still there, I grabbed my purse and my duffle bag, sliding them across my shoulder as I opened the door and headed up the sidewalk—or lack thereof—climbing up the porch and tapped once on the door, my newly enhanced hearing catching everything that was going on inside.

A woman—Lorelai, I assumed—was talking on the phone, her shoes clattering against wooden floors with music playing in the background. I could also hear voices coming from the nearby houses and the sounds of cars on the highway, making their way through traffic.

The second that she heard my knock, though, the woman quickly ended her conversation and I heard her coming towards the door, opening it up to reveal a woman in her early thirties, stunningly beautiful. She had dark hair and the exact same eyes that I did: startling blue and just as vivid as the sky on a clear day. But instead of my short stature, she was tall with a flawless perfection and her lips pulled into a bright smile the moment that her eyes landed on me.

She smelled like coffee and peaches, I noted, the sharp scent catching my nostrils and I was glad that I wasn't on a rampage like anybody else would have been if they were in my situation. Because of the lifestyle that I had chosen, I was . . . well, tamer than I should have been.

"Hi," she said brightly, grinning broadly at me and I only managed a weak, uneasy smile back, but she seemed to take my uneasiness as shyness rather than anxiety. "You must me Susan, I'm Lorelai." Her blue eyes were overexcited at seeing the daughter that she hadn't seen since I was one day old again. "Come on in."

"Thanks," I said, silently thanking the Powers that Be. Without an invitation from anybody in the house, then I never could have set foot inside of the threshold and that would be _extremely_ difficult to explain.

Of course, Lorelai should be more careful about who she invited into the house, but she had the ignorance that most humans did, the same ignorance that I had only a few months ago, before everything had happened and my whole world changed. Hardly anyone knew the truth about what happened after the sun went down and I hoped very much that she never learned the truth about what happened after dark.

With the barrier now gone, I stepped into the house, very grateful that I'd had the foresight to eat before I came here, because this was the first time since I'd been changed that I had been around humans and the smell was intoxicating. If I hadn't been on a strict diet since I'd been changed, then I might not have been able to resist it. As it was, if I didn't have such a strong sense of control, I wouldn't have been able to. After all, I was still only a newborn, less than two months old.

Because I wasn't an average, ordinary girl, not anymore. Once upon a time, that was true. Once upon a time, all I had to worry about was what college I was getting into and studying for my math test. But it wasn't like that anymore. I had changed.

Now . . . I was a vampire.

"Well, Rory isn't home yet, she's still at school," Lorelai offered when an awkward silence fell down upon us after she closed the door. "But you'll meet her later; she's looking forward to meeting her sister. She should be home around five; she goes to this big fancy school up at Hartford, so it takes her a little while to get home." She talked really fast, I noticed with amazement, as though she couldn't get the words out fast enough.

"That's okay," I said, not sure how to respond to this. I didn't know how to talk or what to say in this situation. It was just too weird; this woman had given birth to me, but I didn't know her. And it didn't help that I had been completely changed. If I was any other vampire, I'd want to suck this woman's blood dry.

"Here, why don't I take this for you?" Lorelai said, grabbing the duffle bag before I had a chance to protest. She grunted as she realised just how heavy it was. "Jeez, this thing weighs a ton; what did you put in here, books?" she asked with a grin. "Uh . . . well, why don't we put this up in your room and then I can give you the grand tour?" she asked as she lugged the duffle bag up the stairs and I reluctantly followed her. "So . . . how was the traffic getting here? I know it can get a little hectic this time of day."

"No, it actually wasn't too bad," I said as I followed her up the stairs, slowing down my speed so that I didn't pass her up and get there before she did.

"Well, that's good," she said, smiling as she ascended the last step and dragged my bag down the hall, to the last door on the right. "So . . . is this all that you brought with you?"

I shook my head. "No, there's a couple more bags down in my car," I answered as she pushed open the door and I caught my first sight of my new room. "Wow . . ."

It wasn't much to look at; basically, it was like my closet back home and there was hardly anywhere to put my easel, but there was actually a pretty decent view, I admitted as I stepped inside and looked out the window. And the lighting was pretty good. It would have been pretty bad if I'd had awful lighting, but it wasn't like I was doing much drawing anymore. Not since . . . _him_.

Lorelai interrupted my thoughts. "I know that it's not what you're probably used to, but you can change anything you want, of course, and if you want to put up curtains or something, we could go shopping tomorrow. I'm pretty handy as a seamstress." She seemed a bit proud of this fact.

"No, it's fine," I said, looking around the small room, not at all minding the smallness of the room. My room back home had always seemed . . . well, daunting and too big for one girl. "It's pretty."

She smiled brightly at that. "Good. Well, why don't I give you the grand tour and then we can get the rest of your stuff out of the car?" she asked before cocking her head, studying my necklace curiously. "That's pretty," she observed, inclining her head towards it. "Where'd you get that?"

My hand moved towards the necklace, gripping the stone instinctively before I let go. "It was a present," I said lamely.

Lorelai left it at that, not pursing the subject as I dropped my purse on my bed and my duffle was left by the door as I followed this woman—my mother—out the door and she showed me around.

It was a quaint, tiny little house, but I didn't particularly mind as I looked around. The kitchen looked as though it hadn't ever been used and they had more movies than a video store. Their sense of decoration ranged from monkey lamps to Hello, Kitty bed sheets and everything in between with no real sense of style and where nothing seemed to match perfectly. Even the pillows on the couch were mismatched, which both fascinated and astounded me.

Maybe it wasn't much, but it was more than enough for two—correction, three—women living alone in a small town like this. And anyway, I was more than tired of living in the upper classes where all that mattered was how much money a particular family had and whose daughter was going to marry whose son and make the perfect offspring and all that. I had spent seventeen years in it and was more than glad to get away from it.

Which, now that I thought about it, was exactly what Lorelai had one after she had gotten pregnant with my sister and me. When we were a year old, she had split with Rory, taken off down the highway and gotten the first job that would take her. Maybe I was more like my birth mother than I thought.

After showing me around the house, Lorelai helped me lug my suitcases up to my room. I probably could have done it by myself—in fact, I know that I could have, with my new vampiric strength—but it was probably better to just let her give me a hand and not draw attention to myself. That was the last thing that I wanted to do.

After all, the last thing that this town needed was for a bloodbath to ensure like had happened in Redwood Falls. They were still recovering from everything that had happened, but like what had happened over a hundred years ago, the true story would be downplayed and nobody other than the ones who witnessed it firsthand would know the truth, myself included.

Either she was a little bit nervous herself about having her long lost daughter in the house or she wanted to give me some time to myself so I could make myself feel more at home, but Lorelai left me alone for a little while, heading downstairs to watch some television. The second that she closed the door behind me, I sighed, running my hands through my brown tresses before I moved over to my new bed, sitting down on it.

I shouldn't have come here, I thought miserably as I looked around me in desolation. No matter where I went, I knew that chaos and destruction would follow it and take away the people that I cared about most in this world. It had happened back home and no doubt, my presence here would unleash horrors the likes of which they'd never seen.

But I was a vampire now, an immortal being doomed to walk the endless eons on this earth alone. And I was unable to age anymore, which meant that in only a few years, I was going to have to leave here anyway. This was literally my only chance to know them.

And I knew that if I didn't take this chance, then I was going to end up regretting it. Maybe it wouldn't happen for a couple of centuries, maybe not even for a millennia, but eventually, I would regret not taking the chance to get to know my birth mother . . . and my sister. So I had better take it while I still had the chance.

There are just some things in life that you don't get the chance to do over, such as this. If I never came here, then I would never get to know them and I wouldn't get that choice again.

Maybe a bloodbath would ensue just because I came here. Or maybe I would buy myself a few years of happiness and nothing would happen. It wasn't like any of the other vampires that had created that massacre in Redwood Falls knew that I was alive . . .

Or I guess the technical term would be living dead. But none of them knew that I was one of them knew. They all thought that I was dead. Of them, only the vampire that killed _him_ knew that I was a vampire now and if he came here, I was bound to shove a stake into his chest.

If I ever saw him again, I would kill him.

Getting to my feet, I walked over to where my suitcases lay and opened up a particular one, moving aside the clothes and books that had been placed ever so neatly there, setting them aside until I found a picture frame wrapped up in one of my shirts so that it wouldn't get smashed.

It was nothing special, just a simple silver frame—actually, quite out of the ordinary for anything that I owned. But it was the picture itself that I was more interested in.

Laying inside of the frame was a simple photo of a young man, seventeen years old, wearing a cocky grin as he glanced sideways at the camera, towards me as I had taken it. He was tall and handsome, reaching six feet easily with blondish-brown hair that swept his face in a chaotic mess that was an art form all on its own, but it was his eyes that I had fallen for the first time that I saw him. They were grey, but they weren't a simple, ordinary grey; they were soulful and expressive, reflecting his emotions and portraying them as though they were an open book. If he was angry, they were dark and stormy and if he was happy, they were soft and laughing.

My heart ached as I stared down at him, tears filling into my eyes as he smiled up at me, unaware of the pain that I was going through just by looking at his picture. Reaching out, I brushed my finger against the photograph, memories going through my mind as I remembered the feel of his hair, the way that he would hold me in his strong arms, the feel of his lips on mine whenever he kissed me . . .

It took everything that I had not to start bawling at that moment as I stood up and walked over to the window seat, crawling into it and holding the picture frame in my lap as I stared down at it.

I wouldn't deny that I was grateful to get away from Redwood Falls. I wouldn't say that I was relieved to be out of the tight, prude world that my parents had lived in. I wouldn't say that it was a relief to be able to live my own life and not to be told what to do every minute of every day.

But I would give it all up just to have him back. I would give anything just to have him with me.

"I miss you so much, Tyler," I whispered to my dead boyfriend, my soul mate, my one true love.


	2. Sisterly Bonding

**Strange Fate**

by the Lady of the Mists

Chapter Two: Sisterly Bonding

I don't know how long I sat there, just staring at Tyler's picture, the ache in my chest opening up for the whole world to see and I was relieved that I was by myself as tears appeared in my eyes and I impatiently brushed them away, touching Tyler's face tenderly. I had cried too many times since he had died already, shed too many tears since he had been taken away from me in the cruellest way possible.

It would be different if Tyler was with me; if he had been with me when my mortal life was stripped away and an immortal one took its place, then at least we would be together. But for him to be gone while I was still here, destined to live forever unless I was killed . . . it was more than cruel. It was almost unbearable. I gave my heart to Tyler, my whole heart, and never asked nor wanted it back, so when he died, the best parts of me died along with him.

Maybe it was because of Tyler that I was so determined to lead a less homicidal life than most vampires do. He had managed it; he had done his best to feed off of animal blood only whilst trying to lead an average, ordinary life by day, staying with me even though the desire for human blood had to be overwhelming for him.

Until just recently, I didn't fully understand what he had gone through following the transformation. But now, I got it.

Slowly, I got up from where I was sitting, moving over to the nightstand and set Tyler's picture on top of it, where it would be the first thing that I saw when I woke up in the morning. No matter how long I lived, I was never going to forget him. He was my soul mate, even though he remained stubbornly resolved that as vampires, we didn't actually have souls.

But whether that was actually true or not, I didn't have any idea. As far as I was concerned, if we didn't have any souls, then we wouldn't be allowed to feel any compassion or remorse or any feelings whatsoever other than the desire to feed. Since I could still feel all of those emotions running through me, I decided that we actually did have souls.

Whether Tyler was right or I was, who knew? But even so, I still believe that the idea of soul mates means that we were bound to each other, even in the vampiric state. And I refused to let him go; I would never forget him, even if I lived to be a thousand, I would never forget Tyler's voice, so gentle and poetic, sweet and velvety, but yet stronger than anybody that I had ever known. I would never forget his grey eyes that were as temperamental as storm clouds or that he loved Kit Kats or that his favourite genre of books and movies was adventure, with science fiction coming in a close second or the way that his fingers would strum on his guitar or his voice as he sang.

Forcing myself to tear myself away from Tyler's picture, I reluctantly got up from my bed and proceeded to my suitcases, unpacking them and cramming the bookshelf with all of my books and CDs and folding my clothes into the closet and dresser. The few shoes that I had were placed underneath the bed, along with my suitcases and I set up my easel next to the window seat.

I doubted that I was going to get much use of it anymore. Once upon a time, I had been an avid painter and artist and after I met Tyler, he seemed to make me an even better artist than before. It was as though his mere presence was enough to spark my passion; in more ways than one, he was my muse, able to make me create the most beautiful landscapes and drawings then I'd ever done before.

But then he died and I . . . well, I guess that was one of the parts of me that died along with him.

Wiping away a single tear that made its way down my cheek, I took one last look at the easel, my shoulders slumped forward as I crawled onto the window seat, hugging one of the pillows that had been thrown there to my chest as I pressed my forehead against the window pane, feeling the sunlight that beamed through the glass, warming it considerably.

Touching my necklace again, gripping it tightly, my thoughts instantly turned to my best friend Cassie Robinson, who was the only person in Redwood Falls besides me and Tyler who had known the truth about the mysterious happenings in town. And she had known about the vampires long before I had because it was part of her heritage.

You see, Cassie was a witch, like her mother had been before her and her grandmother had been before her mother and so on and so forth. Cassie was still new to her powers, still barely in control of them, but once she had found out what had happened to me and why I didn't step outside of my house during the daytime anymore, she had stolen her mother's spell book and created a necklace that would shield my from the daylight.

If I had known the consequences of that, I never would have allowed her to do it. Since Cassie was still new to her magic, casting a powerful spell like that had consequences. She had collapsed the moment that the spell was finished, leaving me to rush her to the hospital, and she was placed in a coma for almost a week. When she woke up and her mother discovered what had caused her daughter to be in the hospital to begin with, she whisked Cassie away, moving them across the country and forbidding Cassie from having any contact with me whatsoever.

To be honest, I think that I'm kind of lucky that Mrs. Robinson didn't shove a stake into my heart or set me on fire.

But that was the last time that I heard from Cassie; I said my goodbyes to her when she snuck out of her house the night before they left Redwood Falls. I hoped that the vampires didn't track her down; Cassie deserved better than this life, the one filled with supernatural, never able to have a moment of peace or any sense of a normal life. She deserved to be happy, to have that normal life that she so desperately craved, to meet some nice boy and fall in love and have their happily ever after, to grow old together and have a couple of kids, raising them together. Cassie deserved that much.

Hearing noises coming from outsides, I pulled aside the curtains to see a couple walking hand-in-hand towards the house. One of them was undoubtedly my sister Rory and I could see the resemblance from here.

She was taller than me, almost as tall as Lorelai, but she had the same brown hair that I did, but hers was straight while my hung in natural waves down my back. Normally, I wouldn't have been able to see what colour her eyes were, but thanks to my newly enhanced vision, I could see that they were the same bright blue ones that I had, ones that we had both inherited from Lorelai.

The guy that was walking with her was without a doubt her boyfriend, due to the closeness of them. He was cute, with a mop of brown hair that fell into his face and into his brown eyes, tall and muscular and there was just something about him that kind of reminded me of Tyler. It wasn't the looks, because they didn't look anything alike, but the way that he looked at my sister, the way that he refused to let any harm come to her . . . yeah, there was a lot that reminded me of Tyler.

Letting out a deep sigh, I removed myself out of my tight, rigid position and set the pillow back down.

I had come here for a particular reason: to get to know my birth family while I still had the chance to get to know them. And I didn't come all of this way just to hide up in my room. Might as well start getting to know them now.

Looking back at Tyler, I whispered, "I don't know if you can hear me, Ty, but I won't let you down, I promise. I'm not going to let anything happen to these people. I'm gonna make you proud, I swear."

With those last words, I took one last at my boyfriend before I opened the door, following the voices downstairs, stopping at the foot of the stairs and getting my first real look at my twin sister.

She looked a lot like Lorelai and smelled a bit like her, too—at least, the coffee smell of her, but Rory had a hint of freesia mixed in with it instead of the peaches associated with Lorelai. Her boyfriend stood next to her and they were chatting as I approached. Rory was the first to notice me and a smile spread across her face as she saw me.

"Oh, hey," she said, smiling as her blue eyes sparkled. I managed a weak smile back; she didn't seem so bad, I thought. "I'm Rory."

"Figured as much," I said, nervously shoving my hands into my pockets, a habit that I picked up around Tyler. "I'm Susan. It's nice to meet you."

For the record, I'm not usually this nervous whenever I meeting new people, but the fact that I could lose control at any given moment and lunge at their throats was making me a little wary, especially since there were no other vampires around to hold me back and prevent me from killing them. I was the only one around here and it was up to me to hold myself back. So the anxiety transferred into nervousness and made me slightly shy.

"This is my boyfriend Dean Forester," Rory said, gesturing towards the guy next to her. I was forced to relinquish my guarded position to step down from my spot on the stairs and accept his offered hand.

"Hey, how's it going?" he asked, grinning at me and I found myself grinning back at him. He was a nice enough guy, I thought with a smile, and there was a lot of him that reminded me of Tyler. I guess that sisters tend to have similar tastes in guys.

"Not bad," I said in answer to his question. There was an uncomfortable silence that settled down over us again before I looked down towards Rory's backpack and noticed a familiar book poking out of it. "_Mists of Avalon_?"

She looked confused for a second before she brightened, pulling the novel out of her backpack and grinned back. "Yeah, I just started on it. Have you read it yet?"

"Only about three . . . well, maybe four times," I admitted, chuckling. "I'm kind of a dweeb when it comes to anything and everything regarding King Arthur. I've pretty much read anything that I could find on the subject. Fiction, non-fiction, poetry . . . not to mention every movie that was made about it," I added, biting my lip as I noticed exactly how much I was talking, but nobody seemed to mind.

"Ooh, you know, that's not a bad idea," Lorelai said, clapping her hands together in delight, her eyes gleaming. "Next movie night, we should do _King Arthur_. I mean, we've got swordfights, we've got romance, we've got everything that we need for a perfect movie night."

"Sounds like a plan," Rory said, high-fiving her. I was kind of surprised by the relationship between the two of them. They seemed more like sisters than mother and daughter. I glanced towards Dean and he gave me a wink, silently telling me that this was how it always was around here.

"Movie night?" I asked as Lorelai's words finally caught up with me.

"Yeah, we usually do a movie night around here every once in awhile," Lorelai explained. "Movies, pizza, lots and lots of junk food and then we go to bed feeling completely and utterly nauseous. It'll be the best time of your life."

She sounded so enthused about it that I couldn't help but smile at her. "That sounds pretty cool, I guess," I said. Lorelai just seemed unlike any other mother that I'd ever met that I could hardly believe that this woman had been more or less raised in the same environment that I had been: domineering parents, high-society, private schools, etc.

"Trust me, you won't be sorry," Lorelai assured me. "So what do you guys say, Saturday night? Dean, you in?" she asked, grinning.

"I'm not an idiot," he responded, looking adoringly at his girlfriend, who blushed at the attention.

Finally, Lorelai moved us away from the living room and into the kitchen, where she promptly made coffee.

Generally, I don't drink coffee, but since becoming a vampire, I've learned that it warms up my hands and doesn't startle people when they notice exactly how cold of hands that I have. As long as I have some coffee in my system, then my hands are a little bit warmer than they usually are and then people don't notice anything unusual, which means that I now include coffee in addition to the change of my diet.

Dean had to go leave after awhile because he had to get to his job at the local market and Lorelai got a call from the inn where she worked, so then it was just Rory and me alone. She offered to show me around Stars Hollow and with nothing else to do and it being the weekend and all, I didn't really have anything else to do, so I agreed.

The tour didn't really take long. If you just take a couple of right turns, you'll end up right back in the centre of town, so after showing me around town, we ended up in the bookstore, which was one of the things that we have in common: both of us are addicted to books.

Where, however, I got my artistic capabilities, I have absolutely no idea, because Lorelai apparently has none whatsoever and neither does Christopher, my biological father whom I haven't seen since I was a baby.

It was actually a pretty decent bookstore; I found a couple of books there that I'd been looking for and none of the big bookstores have them. After there, Rory took me over to this antique store, which was also where her best friend Lane lived at. She was a nice girl, but had a little bit of rebellion against her traditionalist parents, since she had CDs stored underneath her floorboards and her closet was stashed with all kinds of regular stuff that her parents would never approve of.

I didn't fail to notice, after we left Kim's Antiques, that there were a lot of people watching me, following my every move.

Rory grinned as she caught me looking over my shoulders, towards a couple of townspeople that were looking at me, studying me carefully. "News travels fast around here," she informed me. "Dad came here last year and practically everybody was phoning one another, telling them that he was here and they hounded us in the bookstore, comparing Dad to Billy Crudup."

"Great," I said, heaving a sigh as I glanced over my shoulder again, making a face. "So . . . Lorelai said that you were going to this fancy school?"

"Yeah, Chilton," Rory said with a nod. I nodded; I remembered hearing about that school. It was a pretty good school, from what Mom had told me. "It's pretty cool, I love it there. Of course, there's this one girl Paris that's always hounding on me. She's hated me since I first started there and now she's the editor on the paper this year, so it's even worse."

I smiled faintly. "There was a girl like that in my last school. Isabella Turner," I said, rolling my eyes. "She had it out for me because her boyfriend apparently had this major crush on me, even though I really could have cared less about him. But even though I never made a move on him, she still took every opportunity to make my life miserable."

"How'd you deal with her?" Rory asked, curious.

"Moved here," I replied, shrugging. Isabella hadn't ceased her torture on me all the time that I had lived there, even after Tyler and my parents had died, still determined to keep me as far away from her boyfriend Marcus Ewing as possible, believing that the moment that she let her guard down, I would swoop in and steal Marcus away from her.

Rory laughed at my bland reply, turning my attention towards a diner in the very centre of town.

"That's Luke's," she explained, nodding towards it. There was a guy in a backwards baseball cap waiting on some people as we passed by. "We usually eat here for dinner and breakfast. Mom and I never really learned how to cook," she said, shrugging. "So we eat out most of the time. But we do have to go to Friday night dinner with the grandparents every week."

"How come?" I asked, puzzled.

"Part of the deal that Mom made with them when they paid my tuition for Chilton," Rory explained. "Every Friday night, we have to go and have dinner with them, so you'll meet them tonight."

I took a deep breath; I had barely been prepared for meeting the mother that I'd never met, let alone the grandparents. But I forced a smile on my face as I looked towards my sister. "Great."

She seemed to notice my anxiety, though. "Don't worry, they're really nice," she assured me. "Well, Mom doesn't really get along with them too well, but that's mostly just old issues. It'll be okay. Anyway, we should get home and change. Grandma gets kind of uptight if we don't wear something nice to dinner," she said with a laugh.

I believed her; seventeen years of growing up in one of those big, stone mansions had pretty much readied me for any kind of dinner. Mom was really strict about me being a "proper" lady and instilling the right manners into me by the ripe old age of five months.

To be honest, I'd hoped that when I moved here, I would be able to get away from all of that rusty, tight upper-class society, but I should have known that my luck wasn't going to hold out. Oh, well, at least it was only dinner one night a week. I could handle it for one night a week.

Later, I would wish that I had been paying a bit more attention as we headed away from town, heading back towards the house, because there was someone hanging around town that I should have noticed, should have been aware of with my new vampiric senses, but I was too concerned with my own woes, with the plans for dinner, and getting to know my new sister than I was my surroundings, so I didn't even notice the guy that was standing there, sticking to the shadows, watching the two of us.

He was tall and lean, looking like an average guy at first glance, but there was a dangerous look to him if you dared to get any closer to him. His dark brown hair fell into his face with a look of casual elegance and his dark eyes were colder than the depths of winter. So long as you avoided looking at him in the eyes, he would be extremely handsome, but those eyes would alert you to the fact that this guy was not at all safe and the best bet would just to get out of there as fast as you were able. And if you were able to escape, then you would be extremely lucky.

But as it was, I was too preoccupied, so I didn't notice him as he remained in the shadows, his dark eyes focusing on me completely. I think at one point, I did feel like someone was watching me, but I put it off to one of the townspeople again, so I didn't bother glancing over my shoulder.

I should have looked over my shoulder, because if I had, then I might have seen him.

And I might have been able to stop everything before it started.

AN: Okay, guys, I'm slightly upset at the severe lack of reviews on the last chapter. I realise that this is a brand-new story, but a couple of weeks to get only one review is a little upsetting. Please, I am begging you, give me four or five reviews and I will be more inspired to write another chapter for this story.

Thanks.

The Lady of the Mists


	3. Attacks and Nightmares

**Strange Fate**

by the Lady of the Mists

Chapter Three: Attacks and Nightmares

All in all, dinner with the grandparents wasn't actually that bad. Emily and Richard Gilmore were pretty much what I had expected: wealthy and domineering, but they still had an unmistakable love for their daughter and granddaughter that no amount of scandal could have disrupted. I was actually pretty impressed with them. It couldn't have been easy for them, when their teenage daughter got pregnant with twins, but they had been relatively pleasant and had welcomed me into the fold with open arms. I felt a little bit unnerved when I stepped back into the tight, prude world that I had just escaped from, even if it was just for one night a week, but somehow, I managed to make it through the evening without wanting to escape through the second-story window.

The drive back to Stars Hollow was anything but quiet. Lorelai and Rory both had the ability to talk a mile-a-minute, something that astounded and amazed me, but I listened as they talked about school and adding a couple of more movies to the list for the following night, when they were planning on the movie night. I added a few comments every once in awhile, but I could barely keep up with them.

Not that it was a bad thing, I thought with a wry smile. Despite that there was so much difference between us, I could also relate to them and I actually liked them.

We had similar tastes in movies, though our musical tastes were far out of range, since mine is reserved for classical and soundtrack music—you know, the background music in the movies and stuff—and maybe some soft rock, but that's pretty much it. I was miles away from the Gilmore girls and yet, there were some things that I could relate with them. I liked a lot of the same movies that they did, I loved reading just like Rory did, and despite the years that had separated us, I liked them and felt a connection with them that I had never felt with my own parents.

Maybe it had everything to do with the fact that they weren't really my parents and that Lorelai and Rory were actually my family or maybe it didn't have anything to do with it at all.

We had just entered back into Stars Hollow when I saw flashing lights ahead of us, alerting us to the fact that something had happened in the few hours since we had left. At the sight, I felt my stomach clench in remembered fear and I prayed against all odds that nothing had happened here—at least, nothing like I was imagining—and it was just my imagination playing tricks on me. This wasn't Redwood Falls; none of the vampires could have followed me here. They didn't even know that I was alive, so why would they come here to wreak havoc on this small, unsuspecting town?

"Whoa!" Rory said, sounding a bit alarmed as Lorelai slowed down, stopping the car a few feet away from where the commotion was. "What's going on?"

"I don't know," Lorelai said as we climbed out of the car, making our way through the crowd and I caught sight of an ambulance ahead of us. There were a couple of ambulance guys herding a body into a bag.

As the smell carried over to my nostrils, I caught the distinct odour of human blood. It wasn't like the animal blood that I had forcibly nurtured myself on; it was sticky sweet, like honey, and warm and inviting. At the very smell of it, I remembered the one time that I had ever tasted human blood, when I had completed the transformation, and it took everything inside of me, forcing the vampire part of me back down, not to throw aside the humans and drain whoever was the owner of the blood dry.

Taking deep, unsteady breaths, I closed my eyes tightly, feeling my face change, felt my eyes turn black and the fangs that I usually kept hidden beneath my human guise emerged.

"Honey?" Lorelai asked, sounding concerned. I felt her touch my shoulder and I tensed slightly. The smell of human blood was intoxicating and despite my amount of control, I was still only a newborn, not even two months old. No matter how much control I had, it was only a matter of time before I lost control and attacked the nearest human. And right now, the nearest humans were my birth mother and my sister. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," I said, taking deep breaths, not sure who I was trying to convince more, her or me. "I have to get out of here. I'll see you at home."

Something in my voice must have convinced her that I really did need to get out of here, because she made no arguments, but released me and I moved as fast as I could without giving away my vampiric speed and raced away from the scene of the crime.

Once I was safely away, I headed not for the Gilmore house, but towards the forest on the outskirts of town, not wanting to take the chance of losing control when they got home.

After drinking a couple of deer—they don't taste as good as some of the meat-eaters, but it still better than nothing and anyway, I don't think that I'm going to get anything better around here—I was calm enough to head back home and luckily, even with a spontaneous hunting trip, I managed to beat them back to the house, because I still didn't do the best job at hunting and my clothes usually ended up in tatters or with bloodstains, so I had to quickly take a shower and changed into a nightgown so as not to arouse their suspicion.

Needless to say, when they got home, Lorelai was more than a little bit confused. "So," she said as she plopped herself down onto the couch where I was reading _Peter Pan_ for about the zillionth time, "what was all that about back there, anyway?"

She didn't sound suspicious, but she did look a little bit concerned as she regarded me.

"Uh . . ." I threw my mind around for an excuse that sounded like she might believe it and said the first thing that came to mind. "Blood kind of makes me squeamish."

"Oh!" Lorelai nodded, as though this explained everything and the worried look left her face instantly. "All right, then. Well, I guess you'll be crossing doctor off of your vocation choices, then, huh?"

I chuckled. "That wasn't really one of my choices in any case anyway," I told her. "So what exactly happened back there?"

Lorelai's face instantly turned grave. "Um . . . it was this married couple that lives in town, the Petersons, they own one of the ceramic pottery shops, they got attacked tonight," she said quietly, seriously.

"Attacked?" I whispered, feeling nauseous again.

Judging from the way that she was looking, this clearly wasn't an everyday event around this town. "Yeah, the cops were saying that it was an animal attack," she explained. "Some kind of bear or something must have got to them, because they were pretty torn up."

An uneasy feeling went through me and I really hoped that I was wrong about this, because if I wasn't, then that would mean that I was not the only vampire in Stars Hollow.

Something must have shown on my face, because Lorelai patted my forearm comfortingly. "Don't worry about it, Susan," she told me gently. "I'm sure that the cops or animal control people will find this animal pretty soon and then, everything will be fine."

"Yeah," I said, fervently wishing that I knew which animal needed to be found, because if it was a vampire, then these people weren't going to know the first thing to do about it. They didn't know anything about vampires, didn't know that the stories that had been passed through the generations were actually true.

I prayed against all odds that I was wrong, prayed that it actually was just an animal that needed to be found.

And I almost convinced myself that I was right.

If I was right, then I didn't know what I was going to do, didn't know how I was going to handle it, but something had to be done.

But at the moment, there really wasn't anything that could be done, not until I knew more, anyway, so after a couple of hours of watching TV with Lorelai and Rory, I went upstairs and climbed into my new bed, laying my head down onto the pillows.

Ever since that tragic night in Redwood Falls, when everything that I had held dear was ripped away from me, I had been seeing that night in my dreams. It was no wonder that I was having trouble sleeping and why I found it so hard to close my eyes. I knew that I had to sleep; even vampires needed to sleep, but it was so hard to close my eyes and allow myself to see those images again.

Eventually, though, the tiredness that had etched across my eyes all day won over my resilience and I gave into the sleep that was inevitable and dread settled down upon me as the dreams that were doubtlessly going to come.

_There were flames everywhere. I had to dive out of the way to avoid a beam that was falling as I threw a glance over my shoulders towards my parents, lying still and motionless, dead before the flames had a chance to get to them. _He_ had made sure that their deaths were painful, sucking them dry and leaving them for me to find when I had come home before he had set the building on fire, trapping me inside with the bodies of my dead parents, with no way to escape this fiery prison. _

_I wanted to scream, but the second that I opened my mouth, smoke entered into my throat, causing me to cough and tears made their way into my eyes in pain. _

_Struggling to breathe through the smoke and trying to see across the dancing flames, I tried to find a way through the fire, tried to make my way across the flames, but there seemed to be no way out of this massacre. I was going to die here. This was going to be the last thing that I saw on this earth. _

_I was never going to see Tyler again. _

_That particular thought cleared my mind and I threw myself out of harm's way as I saw a window of opportunity. _

_Through the kitchen, there was a secret passageway that led out to the stables, which was the only way that I knew out of the house now. Other than me, Tyler was the only one that knew about the secret passageway, so _he_ couldn't have known about it, therefore he couldn't have blocked it and ensure that I would die here. _

_Moving as swiftly as I was able towards the kitchen and trying very hard not to catch myself on fire, I lifted the neckline of my shirt to cover my mouth, trying not to inhale the smoke that was intoxicating the mansion itself. I could barley see through the flames, but I knew the old house enough to know where the kitchen was and then, it was only a short distance to the secret passageway, located behind the pantry. _

_Pushing open the secret passageway, I threw myself inside of it, slamming the door shut behind me. _

_The passageway was quiet and dark, with not a hint of light to show me the way and I had to feel my way through the tunnel. It felt like hours—or it could have been only minutes—before I finally reached the stables and I pushed open the exit, spilling out into the stables. One of the horses, my father's, nickered at the sight of me and I hushed him, racing towards the entrance. _

_The flames were sky-high by the time that I reached the door and I stared, horrified, at the sight. _

_It might be a cold, heartless home, but it was where I had grown up, it was where I had lived for all of my seventeen years. Despite that my parents didn't really seem to care about me and that it didn't really feel like home, it still meant something to me, but now, it was being torn down like it was nothing, turned to ashes before my very eyes. _

_But that was nothing, _nothing_ compared to the horror that I would feel only a few moments later, as a familiar figure met my eyes, a figure that was dashing towards the mansion, with no thought to himself, intent on getting into the mansion. _

_"TYLER!" I yelled at him, trying to get his attention, terrified not for myself, but for my vampire boyfriend. Fire was fatal to him, if he went into that mansion . . . "TYLER, STOP!" _

_But despite his keen hearing, he didn't seem to hear my yells towards him. He thought that I was still inside the mansion and no matter the danger to himself, he would put my safety above everything else. Without a thought for his own personal safety, he ripped the front door off of its hinges and plunged into the fires. _

_A scream of anguish, horror, and terror ripped itself out of my throat and without thinking, I raced for the fiery mansion, not caring about the danger. Tyler was inside and I didn't care if I died going inside the mansion. All that mattered was getting to my soul mate. _

_For one moment, I forgot that I still had Tyler's blood in my system. He had used his vampiric blood to heal my injuries when I had been attacked by _him_ tonight. It was only a small amount of blood, but it still was in my system and if I died with Tyler's blood in my system, then I would come back . . ._

_But in that moment, I forgot that one crucial detail, but it didn't particularly matter. I wasn't a vampire; I couldn't run as fast as they could. And before I could even reach the mansion, before I could cross the long stretch of yard, the foundation of the mansion was finally destroyed, burned to bits by the flames, and the mansion came crumbling down. _

_The mansion had seemed so strong during my seventeen years here, seemed so powerfully build, so impressive that it didn't seem like anything could take it down. But the fire was too powerful and with nothing to stop it, the mansion came crashing down._

_And it took Tyler with it. _

"NO! TYLER!" I was ripped from my dreams as I heard myself scream, despite my attempt to stop the howl that escaped from me, and I sat up straight, the unnecessary breath coming out in short, anxious gasps as I stared around me, taking a minute to recognise where I was.

Before I could regain my composure, however, the door was flung open and Lorelai came rushing inside, looking around as though she expected some intruder to be there attacking me, but when she saw nothing there, she turned to me, looking worried as she saw my expression.

"Susan?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

What could I really say? That I had just had a dream where I watched my vampire boyfriend rush into a burning building that my dead parents were inside of because he thought that I was inside? And because he had gone inside, he was killed trying to save my life when I was fine all along?

No. I couldn't tell her that. I didn't want her or Rory to get involved in that part of my life. As far as I was concerned, neither one of them would ever lose that blissful innocence that they had about the supernatural world.

"Nothing," I whispered, trying to get my breathing in order, despite that I didn't need to breathe anymore. "It's nothing. Just a bad dream."

She pierced her lips together. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked, moving closer to the bed, but I shook my head.

"It's no big deal," I replied, pulling the comforter tighter around me. The dream had shaken my visibly and unfortunately, after these nightmares, I'm not as good at hiding my emotions as I usually am, so she could see that I was shaken up. No wonder she looked so worried and concerned. "It's late; you should probably get to bed."

Lorelai smiled wanly. "Hey, that's supposed to be my job," she joked. "I'm the mother; I'm supposed to tell _you_ when to go to bed, not the other way around." But she did as I suggested, leaving my bedroom and returning to her own across the hall, leaving me to my thoughts.

Letting out a deep sigh, I fell backwards against the pillows, staring up at the ceiling that was cast in an unearthly glow by the moonlight, streaming in through the windows.

There was no way that I was going to get back to sleep for awhile, so rather than just lie there, I climbed out of bed, moving to the window seat, curling into it as I clutched one of the throw pillows to me, the images of the nightmares still hovering in my memory.

I wished that the nightmare had just been a nightmare, but it wasn't. It was the memory of the last time that I'd ever seen Tyler alive.

Cassie had told me what had happened; Tyler had been on his way to stay the night—albeit without my parents' knowledge—with me because I had been attacked by vampires earlier and he'd had to feed me his blood in order to save my life. He didn't want me to become a vampire, so he was going to keep an eye on me, to make sure that nothing happened to me.

And then, when he arrived, he saw the flames. I didn't need Cassie's witch/psychic powers to tell me the rest. I'd seen it with my own eyes.

In a desperate attempt to save my life, Tyler had dashed inside, only to meet his fate when the mansion came crumbling down around him, crushing him. He might have survived that, because he was a vampire, but he couldn't have survived the deadly flames.

Vampires were vulnerable to fire. That, along with sunlight and a stake to the heart, was one of the ways to kill them. There was no way that Tyler could have survived, not trapped inside of a crushed mansion, with no way to escape the deadly flames.

It was all my fault. It might sound cruel, but somehow, I would have survived my parents' deaths. I had loved them, even though they never loved me, and I cared about them, but I would have gotten through it. I would have found the strength to survive.

But Tyler? I loved him more than I had loved anybody in this life, loved him so much that it hurt to think about him. I thought about him every moment of every day. He was so much a part of me that I didn't know where I ended and he began. Losing Tyler was worse than losing my parents, because he was half of myself. After all, isn't that what soul mates means?

I was barely surviving without him. Every day felt like a battle to get through, like I was fighting in a war without him. And the worst part was that he had died trying to save my life. If only _one_ thing had gone differently that night, then I might never have gone home to begin with and then Tyler wouldn't have gone to my house to check on me and then he might still be alive and we would be together.

But now, here I was, with a mother and a sister I barely knew and I had a feeling that the attack tonight was only the beginning.


	4. Face From the Past

**Strange Fate**

by the Lady of the Mists

Chapter Four: Face From the Past

The weekend passed by with no more incidents, no more unexplained deaths, no signs of any "animal" attacks and I relaxed slightly, hoping that it really was just an animal or if nothing else, then whoever it was just was passing through and they weren't stopping to stick around Stars Hollow. I still had my guard up and kept a close watch for anybody unusual around town—but being a newcomer myself, I couldn't exactly tell who was unusual or not. This whole town seemed a little bit unusual to me.

Finally, Monday came and I found myself heading towards Stars Hollow High for my first day at a regular school. It was actually a relief to be going to a nice, normal high school instead of a strict, tight school where the workload was often times more than I could handle. I'm an okay student, but I've never gotten straight A's—except in art and music classes—and I'm pretty sure that my father had to pay the school just to keep me in there, because he and my mother would have been mortified if they had to send me to a public high school with "commoners."

But here I was, walking into a public high school for the first time in my life and I felt the stress roll off of me as I stepped inside, making my way through the halls, trying to find the office so that they could give me my schedule and locker and stuff, but for being a small town, the school was relatively crowded and I had a hard time finding my way around.

I was about ready to give up and go hide in the bathroom until the bell rang and I could go search for the office without having to battle the masses of students that were in the halls when I heard somebody call my name. Instinctively, I turned around towards the voice and let out a sigh of relief when I saw a familiar face.

"Dean, hey," I said, smiling at my sister's boyfriend.

"Hey," he said, grinning as he fell into step next to me, his backpack slung over his shoulder. "I was wondering if I was going to see you today. I thought maybe Lorelai was going to send you to Chilton with Rory."

"She offered to send a letter to the headmaster; I'm sure that it wouldn't have been any problem to do a transfer. I was actually in a pretty similar school back home, but . . . to be honest, I'm not the genius that your girlfriend is and I'd honestly just rather be somewhere where I can breathe easier," I said, shaking my head. "Unfortunately, I didn't not consider that the hallways were just as crowded as they were in prep schools."

He laughed. "I think that's just about everywhere," he told me. "Actually, Chicago was worse." I nodded; I remembered him saying something about he had just moved here last year. "So, which class do you have first?"

I sighed. "Actually, I haven't gotten my schedule yet, I've been trying to find the office," I said grimly.

Dean laughed again, shaking his head and grinning at me. "Follow me," he instructed, gesturing for me to follow him.

Falling into step behind him, I was glad that I wasn't on a rampage, wanting nothing but blood, blood, and more blood. It would've been a shame to kill him; he was actually a pretty nice guy.

Leading me through the halls, Dean finally had me pointed in the right direction and led me towards the door marked OFFICE, which had been just inside of the front doors, I had just somehow missed it. "Just go inside and tell the secretary who you are," he told me. "They'll get you all figured out. Do you want me to wait for you? I don't mind missing science," he joked, grinning.

I laughed, but shook my head. "No, that's okay," I assured him. "Besides, if you're having problems with science, then skipping it might not be the best way to go."

"Point taken," he agreed with a nod. "I'll see you later."

"Bye," I said, watching him go before I disappeared into the office, where there was a woman typing away at the computer, but looked up as I approached the desk.

"Can I help you?" she asked curiously.

"Yeah, I'm Susan Dawson, I'm supposed to start here today," I explained. Immediately, I saw the recognition in her eyes the second that I said my name. Clearly, she knew who I was, just like the rest of the town. Lorelai Gilmore's long lost daughter, twin sister to Rory, come to Stars Hollow at last following the deaths of her adopted parents.

"Yes, of course," she said, beaming at me. "I've got your schedule right here, somewhere." She frowned as she dug through the papers, trying to find where she had put my schedule. Finally, she located it at the very bottom of a stack of papers.

I glanced over it once. It was pretty basic, with English, Math, Science, Gym, and History, plus Art and French as my electives. Actually, French wasn't an elective, because I had to take a foreign language.

Once I assured her that it was perfect, then she gave me a map to the school and my locker number and the combination, telling me that if it didn't work, then to come right back here and they would get it all straightened out. I assured her that I would.

When I found my locker, I opened it up—it worked on the first try—and unzipped my backpack, setting a few books inside of it, but kept my notebooks in my backpack, along with one book just in case I needed it before I weaved my way through the halls for my first class, which just happened to be English.

The second that I arrived, the teacher gave me a list of the books that we would be reading this semester and informed me that we were already halfway through the first one, but since I'd already read it, I wasn't going to have much problem with keeping up.

As I passed through the hallways, I caught glimpses of a few familiar faces, though I only recognised a couple of them. Most of them were just people that I'd seen in town. Dean was nice enough to make sure that not only did I get to the right classes, but also that I had a place to sit at lunch.

"I was the new kid last year. I remember what it's like," he explained as I followed him through the lunch line, picking up a few items and placing them on my tray.

Contrary to popular belief, vampires _can_ eat regular food in addition to the blood in their system. It's not necessary and we generally only eat food because we want to, not because we need to, because we only need to survive on blood, but in order to keep up pretences, I've been eating more than most vampires do, so as not to arouse suspicion. I only ate a bit of the cafeteria food, because it was even more horrible than I'd thought it would be.

Art class was the last class that I had and I moved towards it with my shoulders sagging, wishing that I'd thought of signing up for something else. Not that I didn't love art; I loved it with every fibre of my being and I was one of the best students at my old school, but I hadn't picked up a paintbrush or a pencil in months and I actually dreaded the thought of having to do it again.

But I didn't have much of a choice, since the teacher was having us do paintings. We could pick whatever we wanted to do, she informed us, so long as it was school-appropriate.

I sat there for a long time just staring at the canvas, willing myself to just start drawing anything that came to mind and the first thing that sprung into my mind was Tyler.

_Why not?_ I thought. As much as it hurt to think of him, he was the one thing that was keeping me from going completely crazy.

Casting my memory around, I blotted out the memory of the night that he'd died and focused on the good memories, picturing the last memory of him when we had been happy.

There weren't a lot of ones after he had become a vampire, but there were a few of them. I settled on my seventeenth birthday. Tyler had been so determined not to let anything spoil that day, making it absolutely perfect for me. He didn't take me out to dinner, like most boys would have done, but instead, he took me to this beautiful lake in the middle of the forest.

It was the most beautiful place that I'd ever seen, with the lake shining like crystal and so clear that I could see the pebbles in the bottom, glittering as though they were diamonds. There were purple flowers growing all around us and the moon shone down on us. It was perfect.

We spent all night there, just holding on to one another and whispering tender and affectionate nothings to one another, wishing that this night would never end, because we both knew what the morning would bring; the return of reality and the never-ending fight against the town's vampire problem.

But I didn't focus on that; I focused on that beautiful clearing and I focused on Tyler, the way that his face was when he laughed, which felt like the first time in a long time since he had been turned that he had really laughed, the way that he smiled, the way his stormy grey eyes seemed to clear, turn soft and laughing, and the way that his fingers strummed his guitar as he played for me, sang the song that he'd written for me, as my birthday present.

My hand was shaking as I picked up the drawing pencil and with the melody echoing in my head, Tyler's song vibrating in my memory, I began to trace the image of that clearing, of Tyler with his guitar, playing for me.

He never wanted this life for me, I thought miserably as I continued to sketch, unaware of the fact that the bell had rang, dismissing the rest of the class, or that everybody else was packing up at leaving. Tyler didn't even want this life for himself. Where we would be now, if _he_ had never come to Redwood Falls and we hadn't gotten swept up into all of this?

"Miss Dawson?"

Distracted, I looked up to see the art teacher Mrs. Dupree looking down at me with a kind smile.

"Class is over," she informed me. I looked around, realising for the first time that I was the only person left in the room, everyone else having fled after the last bell. "You can stay for a little while, if you want to, though," she added. "But I have to lock up at five."

I hesitated, but looked back at the drawing. "I think I'll stay for a bit," I said softly. Mrs. Dupree nodded, looking at the drawing for a minute, her lips pierced together, her forehead crinkling in understanding as she walked back towards her desk.

For the first time in over two months, I felt as though a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders and as I traced Tyler's features onto the canvas, I felt as though some part of me was still with me. And maybe that was true, anyway, because just as I had given part of myself to him, he had given parts of him to me. And maybe by recapturing the parts of me that had been undoubtedly his, I would keep him with me.

When five o'clock came, Mrs. Dupree had to lock up and I had to abandon my drawing to leave the school.

I fiddled with my necklace as I walked away, wondering not for the first time if I really was the only vampire around here or if there was another one of my kind here. Because if there was, then there was no way that I was going to escape this unscathed. I was only a newborn and there was a pretty good chance that this unknown vampire was a lot older than I was, which meant that they were a lot stronger.

Plus, they would have the power of mind compulsion, which because of the lifestyle that I had chosen, I didn't possess. Feeding off of animals wasn't as affective as feeding off of humans was. I had tried compulsion, but it hadn't worked too well.

But it would work all too easily for any vampire feeding off of humans, so I had no way to tell who was under their compulsion and who they had worked for them.

"Jeez," I muttered, shaking my head distractedly. "I have _got_ to stop thinking about this."

Hoisting my bag higher onto my shoulder, I headed for the house, piling my books out onto the table so I could start on my homework. I didn't have that much, just some reading to do for English and some problems for Math and that was it.

When I was just about done, Lorelai came home, looking relieved when she saw the pot of coffee that I'd made. "Oh, thank god, you made coffee," she said, immediately pouring herself a cup. "Have you seen your sister? I thought she was supposed to be home by now."

"Yeah, she was here, but she left to go study at Lane's," I answered, punching in a few more problems into the calculator, scribbling down the solution that I came up with.

Lorelai nodded. "So, how was school? Did you meet anybody? Did you make any friends?"

"Uh . . . yeah, I met a few people," I acknowledged. A few people that I had sat next to in class had talked pretty friendly to me, but Dean was really the only person that had really _talked_ to me. Mostly, everybody else just said a few words, smiled or else nodded their heads in greeting.

"That's good," Lorelai said. I glanced up at the sound of approval in her voice. She sounded pleased. "I just . . . I feel like you should get out of the house a little bit more, you know. I know that you're hurting right now, because of your parents, but it wouldn't hurt to get out a little bit."

"Yeah, there's actually a part tomorrow night," I said. "I was actually thinking about going."

Actually, I hadn't been thinking about it, but it wasn't like I had anything better to do and I doubted that I would get her off of my back about joining in the crowd unless I actually put a little bit of effort in. I'd never been a big joiner, not a big party-goer, even before all of this happened.

"Great!" Lorelai beamed, looking pleased. "That's fantastic. You should go, have fun. And don't drink," she added. "And after you're finished not drinking, then drink lots of water and Tylenol."

"Got it," I said, ducking my head back towards the math homework. "But I'm not planning on doing any drinking."

"Yeah, funny thing, nobody ever actually plans on it, but it almost always happens when you least expect it," Lorelai said sagely as she headed upstairs. "Hey, we're gonna meet Rory at Luke's in half an hour, all right?"

"Okay!" I called back.

* * *

I ended up going to the party, even though every instinct in me was telling me not to. It wasn't like I was a big joiner; parties weren't exactly my idea of a good time. But thankfully, Rory and Dean went with me, mostly so I wouldn't be by myself.

The party was at some girl named Lindsay Strauss's house and as Lorelai had warned me, there was plenty of drinks to go around, provided by a couple of older college guys who were looking for a good party to crash. I didn't bother drinking, remembering all too well my first experience with alcohol. It hadn't been pretty or fun.

And spending the whole night in the barn that Tyler and I had chosen to throw up in wasn't any fun either.

Rory and Dean seemed to be having a much better time than I was, though Dean offered to get one of his friends to dance with me. He looked like he felt a little bit sorry for me, sitting over in the corner by myself, but I assured him that I was fine.

And it wasn't like I was lacking for dance partners. I got asked about seven times, some of them with egotistical confidence and others shyly and nervously, but I politely turned them down.

Sure, it would have been nice to have somebody to dance with, but the only guy that I wanted to dance with was no longer on this earth.

Not to mention, the music was practically throbbing my sensitive ears and I was actually starting to wonder if it was possible for vampires to go deaf, because that's what it felt like.

In an effort to give my ears a break, I slid away from the party, heading towards the woods. At least, that's where I was headed when somebody stopped me, one of the drunken partygoers, just as intoxicated as he could possibly be, because the smell of it was practically making me feel a bit tipsy and I hadn't even touched a drop.

"You're Susan Dawson, right?" he said drunkenly, his eyes looking at me slightly unfocused.

"Yeah," I said, glancing at him impatiently.

"Somebody wants to talk to you," he said. I was having a hard time understanding his words, because they were slurred together, strung together like they were one word instead of a complete sentence.

"Who?" I asked, puzzled. The drunk guy shrugged, pointing towards the stairs, where I saw a flicker of movement.

"Just some guy says that he wants to talk to you," he said carelessly, grabbing a cup out of some random guy's hand and downing it in one gulp, tossing it away. "Said that he'll be in the second door on the right. Didn't say what he wanted."

Without waiting for a reply, the guy walked off, leaving me to stare after him before I looked back towards the stairs, suspicion moving through me as I weaved my way through the drunken students and began to head up the stairs, following the guy's advice and opening the second door on the right.

Much to my surprise, the room was completely empty, though the window was open. It was dark, without a single light on, save for the light coming in through the door and the moonlight streaming in through the window.

Closing the door behind me, I crossed the room and reached for the window, latching it securely. Privately, I was starting to think that that drunk guy had just had one too many drinks tonight and was just playing some kind of strange prank on me.

And then I turned around.

Right behind me was a figure that I never wanted to see again, one that had haunted my nightmares for over two months and one that I swore that if I saw again, I would plunge a stake into his heart.

"Riley," I said, surprised at how steady my voice was.

Riley Connelly smirked as he looked directly at me, his dark eyes glinting with pure menace.

"Hello, little sister," he sneered at me.

AN: Okay, guys, please, I am begging you to review. I'm not picky, I don't care what you say in the review, but I need some little incentive to know that people are actually reading this. So please, please, please, please, _please_ review this chapter and chaper three, because I am going out of my mind here.

Thanks.

Lady of the Mists


	5. Promises of Vengeance

**Strange Fate**

by the Lady of the Mists

Chapter Five: Promises of Vengeance

Okay, just so nobody gets confused, let me just take a moment to clear up a few things. Riley Connelly is _not_ my brother, not even by adoption, all right? He could have been my brother, there was a strong possibility of that at one time, but all he would have been was my brother-in-law. But that possibility disappeared the second that Tyler disappeared into that mansion, get trapped inside and the fire turned him to ash.

For everybody who guessed that Riley is Tyler's older brother, you guessed it, but he's also the moronic psychopathic vampire that came into Redwood Falls, bringing his crazy vampire girlfriend with him along with a cadre of vampires looking to party, picking off our town one-by-one. Since Tyler, Cassie, and I were the only ones who knew the truth, though, it was up to us to stop them.

We were a really messed-up team. Tyler was a vampire, Cassie was a newbie witch, and I was just a normal girl with a vampire for a boyfriend who had some really good archery skills.

But still, I learned how to fight against vampires pretty quick. Tyler taught me everything that I needed to know, all the tricks that he learned after his brother turned him, teaching me how to defend myself against Riley if I ever happened to find myself alone with him.

It was a good thing that he did teach me all those things, because one night, when he was away hunting, Riley's girlfriend Cordelia attacked me while I was on my way home from the library. Thank the powers that be, I was wearing vervain at the time, so she couldn't compel me. Vervain is an herb also known as "vampire venom." If a human is wearing it or has it ingested, then a vampire can't compel you. And it's a poison to them; they're rendered vulnerable if they happen to ingest it.

That night that Cordelia attacked me, I just happened to have both. Tyler had made me a necklace that had vervain inside of it—I can't wear it anymore, but I still have it; it's in my bedroom in a jewellery box—and I'd eaten some pasta with vervain in it, mostly because Tyler was extremely overprotective whenever he left me alone to go hunting, worrying about me until he had come back.

But it just so happens that his worrying was justified, because Cordelia did try to . . . eat me, even got a taste by biting into my neck, but the second that my blood entered into her system, the vervain that lingered in my blood coursed through her body and with her defenceless, I was able to stake her.

And in doing so, we rid ourselves of one enemy, but we gained a much more vengeful one. When you're dealing with vampires, let me just say that a psycho vampire is much tamer than dealing with a vengeful one, because when you're dealing with the vengeful one, they will do anything to hurt you. They will kill anybody that you love, anybody that you care about just to hurt you.

It doesn't matter to them how many lives they have to take; most vampires have no conscience. They would happily tear apart a town and destroy it from the inside out.

Riley is the real reason why my parents were killed. Since I was the one who stake his girlfriend, Riley vowed vengeance against me. And he took care of that so thoroughly, took away everyone that I cared about, killed everyone that I loved. My parents . . . Tyler . . . and I would bet a lot of money that it was because of him that caused Cassie's mother to freak out and take her daughter away from me.

He promised me that he would not hesitate, would show no mercy until I was dead or worse.

And thanks to him, I got the "worse" scenario.

In order to become a vampire, you have to die with vampire blood in your system and just before the attack on my house, Tyler and I had been ambushed by Riley's men. I had been fatally wounded. One of the vampires used my stake against me, shoving it into my chest.

In a desperate attempt to save my life, Tyler gave me his blood to drink. Vampire blood has extraordinary healing abilities; it can heal almost any wound, but so long as it's in your system, you're vulnerable to becoming a vampire. If I died with Tyler's blood in my system, I would come back, in transition. But unfortunately, I never had time for the blood to leave my system.

The night that my whole life changed, that everyone I loved was killed right in front of me, I just sat there, watching as the fire consumed my house, turning my parents' already dead bodies to ash, destroying the only man that I had ever loved, taking him away from me for all eternity.

I don't know how long I sat there, but eventually, I realised that Riley was approaching me, his laughter maniac. He was pleased by the outcome. Leaving me alive after losing Mom and Dad and Tyler was better than just killing me. If only he had been that merciful . . . if only he had just left after that.

You see, when we were attacked earlier, we had wiped out most of the cavalry that did the attacking, but one of them managed to flee just in time to save his own skin. He'd watched everything and informed Riley that I had Tyler's blood in my system, so Riley realised that my grief could last much longer than a human life.

He laughed at me, jeered at me, taunted me about Tyler and I lost all control. I flew at him and pounded on him. I wanted to kill him and if I hadn't been so overwhelmed by grief, I probably would have. I'm pretty sure that I got at least two good punches in before Riley grabbed me, gripping my face tightly. The look on his frightened me and I stared back, tears flowing down my cheeks.

Bending over so that his lips were right next to my ear, he whispered, "Welcome to the family, little sister."

Then he snapped my neck, killing me.

Sometime later, I woke up in Riley's hideaway. There was a stock of dead bodies in the corner, a collection of his victims. I recognised a few of them as missing people around town and my stomach turned over.

When I finished being sick, I realised that there was still one alive, bleeding nearby, and the smell of it wafted up to my nostrils.

Tyler had been reluctant to discuss the change with me, not wanting me to know the details or the choice that he himself had made, but eventually, he did tell me. Once I entered transition, I had to either feed off human blood in order to become a vampire completely or allow myself to die.

I didn't want to become a vampire. I didn't want eternal life. I didn't want to feed. What I wanted was to die. At least then I would be with Tyler and we'd be together again.

But Riley wasn't about to let _that_ happen. When he realised that my stubborn streak was holding strong, he took matters into his own hands. He grabbed me, forcing me to the dead girl, holding me with my lips only centimetres from her, where she was still bleeding.

It was the last thing that I wanted to do and I tried to restrain myself, but I wasn't as strong as I wanted to be and the smell of human blood was simply too enticing.

I drank. And if I live to be a thousand, I will regret that decision until the day I die. Or . . . be more than dead. Whatever.

But I completely the transition and was trapped in that house until sundown, but Riley, with his sunlight-protection ring that Cordelia coaxed—okay, threatened—into making, was able to escape the house, leaving me to myself for the next couple of hours.

And in those couple of hours, I was able to organise my priorities. Just because I was a vampire didn't mean that I had to be a monster. Tyler had managed to survive without going on a killing spree. And I've met another vampire in Virginia who was able to abstain from human blood. I could do it too.

By the time that Riley came back, I had already made my escape, but I knew that I had to work hard to fight the bloodlust.

That was the last time that I'd ever seen Riley and I had half-hoped that it would be a long time before I saw him, centuries, if I had any luck. But my luck had just run out.

He had caught up with me, mere months after I had seen him last, and he had me alone, with a house full of humans that were just ripe for the picking. They were all too drunk to even _remember_ what happened tomorrow anyway.

Taking a deep, unsteady breath, I pushed my hands into my pockets, taking a relaxed, comfortable position while my vampiric eyesight watched his every move. "So . . ." I said conversationally, "when did you get here? Let me guess, about a couple days ago, probably last Friday? That was you that killed the Petersons, wasn't it?"

"You always were the quick one, Susie," he said tauntingly, using the detested nickname. He plopped himself onto the bed, snatching up a fluffy bunny that probably belonged to Lindsey's younger sister. Or else Lindsey herself. I wasn't one to keep stuffed animals around, but that didn't mean everybody else wasn't. "It's no wonder that you had your hooks deep in my brother. No wonder he wasn't about to let you get away. Too bad that he didn't have the strength to turn you," he added, shaking his head. "Well, before that night, anyway. This might have gone an entirely different way. Who knows, we might have been one big happy family."

"Don't make me laugh, Connelly. Even if Tyler—" Saying his name felt like a punch to the stomach, but I forced myself to continue, "—had turned me, you never would have welcomed me into your precious little vampire family."

"You're right," Riley said with a sigh. In one second, he had leaped off of the bed and was inches away from my face. "You think that I'll ever forget the pain that you caused me?"

"I never would have staked Cordelia if she hadn't followed me that night and tried to kill me," I pointed out. "If you hadn't come to Redwood Falls, wanting your brother to join you in your undead family, then none of this would have happened."

Riley had no reply for this, his face twisted into pure fury, but he just turned around and walked back towards the window, placing his hands on the frame. I watched him carefully, not moving a muscle as he finally turned back towards me, his expression completely relaxed now as he regarded me, his dark gaze cool and collected.

"And here's something interesting," he said in a menacing voice. "You and I actually have something in common."

"If you're referring to the fact that we both lost the loves of our lives, you're right about that," I agreed, surprising him. "But the big difference between you and me that I didn't become a psychopathic maniac and go on a killing spree and of those victims, my only sibling was included in that list. At least I didn't kill my own sibling, Riley. And from where I stand, that's a pretty unforgivable offence. And it's something I will never forget or forgive you for."

Riley was suddenly standing right in front of me again, his face twisted into rage. "And who says that I ever wanted your forgiveness, little girl?" he hissed at me, his dark eyes suddenly darker and his teeth turned into fangs. "I've heard what you've been doing. You're not feeding on humans. Instead, you're keeping yourself sustained on Bambi and Thumper. Do not think for one second that I couldn't rip your heart out if I wanted to. You do not stand a chance against me."

"Yeah . . . now where have I heard _that_ before?" I said sweetly, looking right back at him unflinchingly. "And I remember telling you that if I ever saw you again, I'd put a stake in your heart."

With a snort, Riley's face shifted back into his human guise. "So you did," he agreed. "It seems that you haven't lost that fire. Such burning light," he said mockingly.

"What do you _want_ from me, Riley?" I snapped at him, blue eyes flashing dangerously. "You already got everything that you wanted: you killed my parents, you got your brother killed, and you caused me more pain than I have ever suffered. What more do you think that you can do to me that you haven't already done? Because FYI, there isn't a whole lot that you can do to me that you haven't done already."

"Not true," Riley replied, the smirk making its way across his face again. "You know, I wondered why you would leave Redwood Falls to come to this crummy little town. I thought you would head to New York or something, maybe head across the seas and backpack across Europe. But no, you just head across a couple of states to this stupid little town and move in with a mother who never wanted you and a sister you didn't know about."

I felt as though I had been struck across the face and I just barely kept myself from staggering backwards at the force of the jibe. "You don't know anything about me or my life or my family," I said when I was sure that my voice wasn't going to shake. "You—"

If my mother could have heard me just now, I would have gotten the grounding of the century. I'm sure that I never would have seen the light of day until I was allowed to go to college if she heard me call Tyler what I had just called him, because believe me, it's not something that would be heard in a PG movie. It probably wouldn't even be allowed in a PG-13 movie.

Riley, on the other hand, looked impressed. He whistled in admiration. "Quite a tongue you've got there. You talk to your mama with that mouth?"

"Which mother?" I returned coolly. "The one who was kind enough to take me in when I had nowhere else to go or the one that you murdered?"

"Now, now, Susie, play nicely," he said smoothly as he propped himself onto the window, preparing himself to spring. "Anyway, considering that you're going to be seeing a lot more of me, you might want to be nice to me. Since I can . . . oh, kill that pretty little sister of yours and that beautiful mother that you've got, you might want to be extra nice."

If I were still human, I can guarantee that my heart would have been racing like a jackhammer at the threat. "Why would you want to stick around here?" I demanded. "You know, people aren't stupid, no matter what you think of them, Riley. They're gonna notice if the body count starts to pile up and they're going to start looking for serial killers and start looking towards the newcomers in town."

"Hmm." Riley looked thoughtful. "Yeah, you're right. That could a problem for _you_, couldn't it? I mean, if they start asking the wrong questions, then they'll find out about all of those murders that happened in Redwood Falls, won't they? And then they'll start asking some questions that you won't be able to answer."

"Is that your game here? To run me away from here?" I demanded. He shrugged, smiling innocently. "What do you _want_, Riley?"

"What do I want? Well . . . Cordelia back, for starters," he said, shrugging. "But there's no way that that's going to happen. So making your life as miserable as possible is a really great way to get started. After a couple of centuries, I might get so bored that I'll actually want to kill you, but for right now . . . yeah, making your life miserable is the high point for me."

Perching himself on the outside ledge, he said, "Catch you later."

Then he jumped off, landing smoothly on the grass outside.

Thankfully, though, there was only one kid in the backyard and he was too drunk to notice that Riley had just jumped from a third story and landed on his feet without even stumbling. Snatching the cup of beer out of the guy's hand, Riley drank it before lifting his head towards me, a smirk playing across his face as he tackled the guy to the ground.

"Riley, no!" I shouted, dropping out of the window and using my vampiric speed to get over to the guy before Riley killed him, but by the time I got there, it was already too late.

"Get ready, little sister," Riley hissed at me, his mouth covered in blood and I tried to keep my stomach from lurching. "Because Redwood Falls was just one little battle. The war is only just beginning."

He dropped the dead guy onto the ground, smiled at me in an almost friendly way before he took off, vanishing into the woods and leaving me at the scene of the crime.

Closing my eyes as the scent of the blood carried up to my nostrils, I forced myself to look around, anywhere but at the kid, before I took off at a run back towards the house.

"Somebody, help!" I shouted as I burst inside, looking everywhere for someone sober.

"Susan, what happened?"

I looked around to find Dean standing right behind me, a concerned look on his face as he saw me panicked expression.

"What's wrong?" he asked urgently.

"Where's Rory?" I asked, immediately fearing the worst.

"She's in the bathroom. I just left her. What's wrong?"

"Animal attack," I whispered, jabbing my hand towards the door leading outside. "Some kid outside . . . he's dead."


End file.
